the review: shrimp and grits to meatballs

We had quite an assortment of meals last week, most of which were just ok. Rather than bore you with a post on each one, I’m going to give you the run down all in one shot.

We started the week with shrimp and grits. It was ok. I switched the bacon out for chorizo, which gave the dish more flavor. I’m still holding out for a better recipe. Do you have one? Why are you holding out on me? Don’t you know how important this is to my well-being and balance? Ok. Sorry. With shrimp and grits, we served green beans, garden tomatoes, and prosciutto. Always a good side dish. And clearly made by a stellar chef.

On Tuesday night, we had homemade chicken nuggets with oven roasted vegetables. I’ll let Gus’s review speak for this one: “Mom! These are the best! We should DEFINITELY have this dinner again.” The kid ate a half of a pound of chicken on his own.

I believe I’ve previously mentioned my aversion to dino nuggets. Yuck. Dino nuggets this recipe was not. These chicken nuggets from Weelicious were easy to make and contained no junk. I will admit that I had to read the instructions several times and still didn’t believe that I was really supposed to put the chicken in my food processor, but trust me on this one. It works. You’ll get something that is basically the consistency of meatballs or cookie dough, and if you can pretend that you are not fondling raw chicken, you can move mountains with this recipe.

The recipe notes that you can actually freeze these before baking them. I’ll be trying this later in the week. Five stars on this one. (P.S. If you haven’t made the gingerbread pancakes from Weelicious, you are missing out.)

Wednesday was pizza night. Couldn’t deal.

Thursday night was a complete flop. I went with the white bean chili but didn’t have any roasted pork. So I made a pork roast. It was fine. The soup? Fail. Let me be quick to point out that this was NOT the recipe’s fault. I’m pretty sure it was the combination of the recipe that I used to roast the pork (different from the soup), not using quality white beans (generic all the way and so mushy you wouldn’t believe), and the fact that I didn’t time everything correctly. My soup just turned to mush. My darling daughter pointed out to her brother as he was all out refusing to eat it that it tasted much better than it looked. I bribed the kids with mini Kit Kats for dessert.

Which brings us round to Friday night. Meatballs and spaghetti are always a good thing. Especially when you can make meatball subs for leftovers.